My name is Luka.

[cyrano]

And asking for information from my psychology-inclined friends about childhood abuse and its long lasting effects.

I'm working on a fictional character who was sexually abused as a child by a neighbor, and I've been poking around the net looking for descriptions of behaviors that tend to show up in adult survivors. I failed my Google fu, however, and haven't yet had much luck. Any pointers?

Comments

[hamgallon84.livejournal.com]

Ah, we discussed this very idea last night in my Feminist Theories of Violence class. Straight out of one of my textbooks:
"It has been noted that child victims fare better to some extent than adult rape victims because they are less likely to have suffered massive physical coercion or threat, but not because they are so quick to forget. The fact that so many child victims fail to report their experiences to anyone, even their parents, is power evidence that the experience is surrounded by conflict.
The picture from clinical records on adults who were former child victims also tends to support this view. Psychotherapists report an unusually large number of child sex victims among their clients and note that women with such experiences are often suffering from depression and difficulty relating to men."
Also, child sex victims are more likely to become adolescent runaways than non-victims.
FYI: White children are more likely to be sexually abused at a younger age than are children of color, and are as likely to be sexually abused as are minorities.